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CardName: Color Mesh Cost: Cwubrg Type: Design Pow/Tgh: / Rules Text: Color mesh is advanced, progressive form to replace the outdated, misproportioned color pie. Flavour Text: Set/Rarity: Metadesign Collaborative None |
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Color mesh consists of nodes and lines which connect the nodes. Nodes represent mechanics and effects. Each color and colorless occupy their own region of the mesh and contains nodes of effects that relate to that color. A node's size is proportional to the importance and frequency to that color.
Lines connect nodes from different colors to show sharing of mechanics and effects. Such common bonds between two or more colors is helpful for multicolored cards and mechanics.
The mesh can be represented in various forms. Visually it could a three-dimensional graph. The attributes of the nodes and lines might be stored in a database.
Color pairs relationships:
Delineate the color and color pairs to ideally balance them mechanically and flavorfully.
Opposites can more clearly define a color's boundaries and values. Then from that extrapolate the cooperation between colors.
For instance,
oppose at belief versus science, and cooperate at 
law (from order) and 
system (from plan).
Opposition:
Cooperation:
I'd say the white/black opposition isn't primarily light/darkness, any more than the red/blue opposition is primarily fire/water. In both cases that's a common elemental manifestation of the conflict, but the real opposition is plan/action for blue/red as you say, and selflessness/selfishness for white/black.
I don't buy selfish angle, thats why I avoided at all costs. Its an biased opinion.
Black's so called selfish is better understood as hunger and desire. I look at zombies and vampires cards, and first thought is basic hunger. They don't consume because they're selfish; its because they have unceasing hunger that cant be satiated. I look at Other Black cards and their mainly desire for power and control.
Both white and Black encourage sacrifice and targeted and mass destruction , but why is one more selfish than the Other?
Fire /ice is not chosen those are too concrete and narrow to help figure Out Other attributes. Heat/cold would be Better, still Not the essence of this color pair. Otoh light Darkness is broad and real opposites. Aesthetically and conceptually evocative through many layers. We can easily envision representatives of light /dark (angels/demons )and also planning /action (wizards /warriors ). But who are Fire /ice tribes? (Aside, personally make Gnomes
with affinity to ice, snow, taiga. )
Compare white's Benevolent Bodyguard, Caregiver, and Burrenton Forge-Tender to black's Carrion Feeder, Abhorrent Overlord, and Altar's Reap and tell me that black's sacrifices don't feel selfish whereas white's sacrifices feel selfless?
Admittedly Fanatical Devotion could be flavored either way.
The temperament of zombies isn't helpful for establishing a black's philosophy any more than the temperament of a sea monster or an albatross is for blue, or a hyena in red. Look at sentient black creatures, especially legends.
Actually, looking at the 7 monoblack legends currently in standard is rather interesting. You've got Gonti, Lord of Luxury and Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet, who are pretty typical self-interested black characters. You've got Kothophed, Soul Hoarder and Bontu the Glorified, who are sneaky supernatural black beings who exploit others. So far so standard.
But then you've got Liliana, Heretical Healer, who's black for no good reason except that she flips into the supremely selfish Liliana, Defiant Necromancer. You've got Drana, Liberator of Malakir, who's black primarily because she's a vampire (the same way Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer is red because he's a goblin despite being a careful, methodical artificer), but also because she's very proud on behalf of her race. Pride is an interesting trait that's black but also potentially sympathetic.
And then there's Yahenni, Undying Partisan, who's the most sympathetic black character possibly ever, who throws parties because they just want to feel alive, who helps poor people because they enjoy the publicity, who loves their friends because they like the way that feels.
I did this once, but rather than using keywords or mechanics as nodes, I used common terms from the english language and used a parallel mapping to another set of classes (D&D alignments) to create a mapping between the two sets of classes. I actually recently thought about recreating the project.
The white-black conflict is the conflict Form vs. Will; or Idealism vs. Pragmatism; or Unity vs. Individuality. White is the color of a higher order and faith in each other and the system - fatalism when leaning towards its ally green (accepting); regulation when leaning towards its ally blue (improving). Black is the color of doubt, distrust, heresy - rebellion when leaning towards its ally red (acting); scrutiny/questioning when leaning towards its ally blue (observing).
Doubt (in others) feeds a tendency towards self-reliance and hence self-interest, which is using white's terms "selfish".
(It should be noted that cause and effect easily can go two ways)
I cannot believe that none of the white-red cooperation words reflects conviction/zeal.
I also need a better explanation for "heart vs. soul" when it comes to red vs. black.
Oh yes, "Unity vs Individuality" is a very good description of white vs black, and hopefully one that amuseum can get behind as well.
All those black cards only reinforce the idea of hunger and desire and power. It's no more selfish than blue drawing cards only for yourself or green giving yourself tokens.
White might have strong theme for unity, but that doesn't automatically project the opposite theme to other colors. Black summoning a horde of zombies hardly convince of individuality. Don't conflate apathy for selfishness.
Now extraversion–introversion is an apt dichotomy for white-black, one which I've used elsewhere. However, these qualities can be manifested or approximated in other ways; whereas light-dark
Heart and Soul is trying to be clever, but somehow works to describe the core concepts that matter to red and black. Heart refers to emotions that are bound to a physical biological organ which is subject to natural, biochemical stimuli; Soul is invisible, spiritual entity that is believed to be essential of all lifeforms, which can be manipulated only through esoteric metaphysical, occultish means.
The cooperation chart above that only shows one axis per color pair is not broad to cover all the possible mechanics and archetypes. Let's add another dimension per pair, and an overarching theme for each color, to be somewhat more comprehensive. (Perhaps more connections can be further added to form a more elaborately informative mesh.)
Cooperation between color pair:
MO, Archetypes:
Seems like a rather basic color pie exercise to scribble on a piece of paper on a boring lecture or whatnot. Though this does sound like it would need a lot more visual methods to properly show itself.
> Color mesh is advanced, progressive form to replace the outdated, misproportioned color pie.
Fair enough. So what are the things you consider to be outdated and misproportioned in the current color pie (and what are your suggestions to fix those issues)? So far it looks like it all goes accordingly with the "current standard".